At least she didn’t offer them to me. I’ve turned down the last three buckets of wilting flowers she tried to pawn off after realizing James would want to know where they came from. While I could’ve explained away daisies or roses as something I picked on a walk, branches that had to be shipped up from central California wouldn’t be as easy.
The argument with James is still bugging me. Twice, I’ve turned to Liz with questions on the tip of my tongue, and twice I’ve turned away. Her offer to talk is a lifeline I’m afraid to use, no matter how desperate I am for her advice. What if I say too much? Or what if she figures out what I’m hiding and calls the police?
I decide to approach what I want to know from the other direction. Threading two lavender stems into the arrangement, I say, “Sam doesn’t talk about his uncles much. Do they ever come visit?”
Her amused snort isn’t at all what I expect. “Oh, they visit all the time. Too much, if you ask me. Sam probably doesn’t talk about them because he and my brothers butt heads. They never thought Joe was good enough for me, which irritates Sam, and Sam reminds them of Joe, which irritates them. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
“That’s awful,” I say. Even if James doesn’t approve of me dating, he and Sam have been best friends for years. That has to count for something. “Why didn’t they think Joe was good enough for you?”
“You know, I don’t think anyone would’ve been good enough in my brothers’ eyes. Danny and Michael used to beat up all the boys who asked me out in high school, but Joe was persistent. The day he took down both of my brothers in front of half the school was the day I knew I’d marry him.” She smiles wistfully and turns the diamond ring on her finger. “We were only sophomores and my brothers were both upperclassmen. No one bothered Joe after that.”
Now I know where Sam gets it. “They didn’t try to stop you from marrying him?”
“They tried.” She laughs, but the disappointment hidden beneath the sound speaks louder. “Neither of my brothers came to the wedding. Joe enlisted in the Army, so we had to put it together really fast. They assumed it was a shotgun wedding, but I didn’t get pregnant with Sam until a couple weeks later. Not that they’d listen.
“Now that he’s gone, Danny calls on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Michael calls on the weekends. They’ve been pushing me to move back to Sacramento where we all grew up, but Sam’s life is here. His memories are here.” She gives me a sad smile. “You’re here. I can’t take that away from him.”
“Maybe you can move when Sam goes to UCLA?”
“Maybe.” Turning back to her arrangement, she shrugs. “We have a pretty big family down there, so at least Danny and Michael wouldn’t get away with bossing me around as much. Our parents thought it was cute when we were growing up, but now… not so much. They loved Joe and think Sam is the greatest grandkid ever. Even if they hardly see him.”
The touch of sadness to her voice reminds me of what she’ll be losing when we leave. I can’t help but wonder if she knows how responsible he feels for watching over her.
“Sam’s afraid to leave you, I think,” I say after an uncomfortable silence. “He knows he reminds you of your husband, and more than anything, I think he wants to be the man of the house like his dad wanted.”
Liz sighs. “I love my son, but he is just like his father and his uncles—stubborn and overprotective. He means well, I know he does, but Sam needs to make his own life and his own memories. That’s what his father would want.”
What would it feel like to have parents like Sam’s who wanted the best for me, no matter what it cost them? The closest thing I have to a parent is James, and he’d rather keep me locked up in our bedroom where he can keep an eye on me than let me live my own life. Sure, I told him not to fight, but only because we’ve both seen what fighting for money did to our father.
Jabbing the fern frond right into the center of the bouquet, I try and fail to rein in my irritation. Figuring out what to do with my mess of a life is hard enough without having my brother trying to control everything. If he gets his way, we’ll still be living in a cheap apartment on the crap side of town when we’re fifty. He’ll still be at the mill and I’ll still be sneaking out to work with Liz, putting together crappy arrangements no one will ever buy. Sam will be married to some rich movie star in California and won’t even remember the scarred high school girl he dated for a couple months back when—
“Sarah, don’t let those boys run your life.”
I jump, nearly dropping the water spritzer I was about to mist the failed arrangement with. Liz pushes away from the counter she’s been leaning against, arms folded as she watched me make a mess of her precious flowers, and walks over to my workstation. Before I can come up with an excuse for why I’ve destroyed Mr. Harrison’s twenty-fifth anniversary arrangement, she holds up a hand.
“I know my son and I know your brother, so don’t even try to deny it. If Joe’s death taught me anything, it’s that life’s too short to let someone else control you.”
She takes the spritzer bottle out of my hands and studies the bouquet, head cocked to the side again. “If I’d listened to my brothers instead of my heart, I never would’ve gone out with Joe. I certainly never would’ve married him, and Sam never would’ve been born. No matter how much they badgered me over the years, I can’t bring myself to call anything that resulted in the birth of my son a mistake. Something tells me you’ll agree.”
She picks up the six fern fronds I’d been debating on adding and weaves them into the bouquet, framing the one I jammed into the middle.
“There,” she says and steps back. “It’s pretty, don’t you think?”
I nod and stare at the finished bouquet, standing perfectly fluffed and balanced on the table in front of us. It’s one of the prettiest bouquets I’ve ever seen.
Liz puts the spritzer back in my hand and gives my fingers a squeeze. “Your instincts are better than you think, Sarah. Maybe it’s time you start paying attention to what they say.”
Thirty-six
I walk through the gate into my backyard at 2:17—almost an hour and a half earlier than normal—clinging to the knowledge I’ll have the house to myself for a few hours, just like I cling to the long, lingering kiss Sam gave me in the alley behind my house.
Liz’s pep talk was exactly what I needed to get my head screwed on straight. In one and a half months, I’ll never have to say goodbye to Sam again. I’ll never have to see the paint peeling away from our siding, hide in my bedroom all night, or lock the bathroom door when I change my clothes or brush my teeth. If I can hold it together for one and a half months, everything will be fine.
And tonight, I’ll tell my brother my plans.
I let myself in the backdoor and ditch my purse and flip-flops in the kitchen instead of walking them back to my bedroom. There’s no way I’m going to waste a second of this freedom hanging out in my room—not when I can use the time to piece together the lasagna and garlic bread Sam has me so excited to make.
Hopefully a homemade meal will put James in a good mood.
Ignoring the prickles creeping up my spine, I pull the small piece of paper out of my back pocket, scan the ingredients, and poke through my kitchen hoping it’s all still here. Not that anyone but me ever cooks anything, but you never know.
Jar of spaghetti sauce, check.
Box of lasagna noodles, check.
Frozen loaf of garlic bread, check.
Raw hamburger and shredded mozzarella cheese, check and check.
Gathering everything into a somewhat organized pile on the counter, I get to work. Our kitchen is soon filled with the rich scent of browning meat and warming garlic bread.
The toilet flushes.
Blood floods my face as I eye the foot-long rectangular noodles. There’s no way they’re going to fit into the dinky pot we own without some kind of intervention. Hands shaking, I break them in half and drop them one by one into the pot of boiling water.
The
snick of a beer can almost blends into the sound of noodles snapping.
Good thing Sam isn’t here, I tell myself. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t approve of the noodle destruction. And it’s not like anyone will notice when they dig into the gooey, cheesy mess, right? Keep breathing, Sarah…
The noodles are limp and wavy before I’ve scraped together enough courage to face him.
He’s standing in the archway between the kitchen and the foyer in a dingy green flannel shirt and worn out jeans. Leaning against the wall, with his hands in his pockets and his ankles crossed, he looks eerily like James. He’s lost weight since he started hanging out at Smoke Jumpers, so the only difference between them is their eyes. Cobalt blue instead of sky blue, glinting instead of sparkling, anger instead of humor.
Minor details that make all the difference in the world.
I glance at the microwave. 2:31. “You’re early.”
“I’ve been here for hours,” he says from where he’s standing. “Seems someone told the cops they think I killed your mother. Got hauled out of work for questioning first thing.”
He pushes away from the wall and strolls toward me, deceptively casual. “Didn’t even let me drive my own car to the station. When they didn’t get anything out of me, I had to hitch a ride back to work with one of the sheriffs.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I try to step back, try to put some extra distance between us, but the stove is in my way. There is no doubt in my mind that I’ll pay for this monstrous mistake.
He stops in front of me. Too close. I turn back to the stove and pick up my wooden spoon. I feel him behind me, watching me poke at the wavy noodles over my shoulder. Things have been so calm around here lately. Maybe he’ll get bored and go away.
Or maybe the other shoe is finally going to drop.
“Smells good,” he says. I cringe when his words caress my neck and what’s left of his beer gut brushes against the small of my back. “I’ve gotta say, your cooking’s gotten a lot better.”
“Thank you,” I say, because I’m afraid not to.
His fingers wrap around my wrists, forcing me to leave the wooden spoon behind in the pot, as he draws my arms back down to my sides. Slowly, he runs his hands up to my shoulders to my neck. My heart pounds so loudly in my ears, I almost can’t hear him over the skip-trip rhythm and the gurgling pot of water.
“Seems the Powers That Be don’t like it when cops accuse one of their workers of murder,” he continues. “They suspended me for two weeks without pay, which was a pretty shitty thing to do, but I’m real good at making lemonade out of rotten lemons.”
His thumbs press into either side of my spine and drag downwards, leaving behind moisture where his sweaty palms had been. His hands, hot and heavy like tar oozing across my skin, shove me forward and I nearly fall into the hot pan of meat. Only his arm snaking around my waist and his fingertips digging into my stomach save me from a nasty burn.
“You killed her,” I whisper.
Behind me, his body goes rigid, but his hands continue to caress my stomach. “You don’t believe that,” he says in a smooth voice. “Now, I’ve got it on good authority that your brother ain’t comin’ home ‘til late. What do you say me and you pass the time together?”
“Leave me alone.” I eye the knife I used to cut the big loaf of garlic bread in half so it’d fit on our small baking pan. It taunts me from the counter a few feet away, it’s blade greasy and crumb-spattered.
“No, I don’t think I will.” He leans closer and breathes in slowly. Deeply. “You know, you’ve always been so much prettier than your mother.”
Swallowing back vomit, I tear myself out of his grasp, dive for the knife, and whirl around. Though he’s caught off guard by the point hovering a foot from his stomach, my father laughs. The amused look in his eyes is the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.
“You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
He lunges at me. I jump out of the way and slash at his arm with the knife, but the blade is too dull to do any real damage. Glancing at the scratch that’s dribbling blood like a giant paper cut, my father lets out a growl.
Everything happens so fast. He knocks the knife out of my hand with his left fist and punches me in the side of the head with his right. I go down, the familiar swirling blackness clouding the edges of my vision. Hovering above me, my father looks more dangerous than ever.
“Weak, just like your mother,” he sneers. “You gonna beg me to beat the shit out of you, too? Your mother liked it. Hell, she couldn’t get off without it.”
I don’t stand a chance when he drops to his knees and pins my body beneath his, one hand firmly clamped around my throat so I can’t breathe, let alone scream. When he tears my t-shirt from the bottom hem to the neck and wrenches my jeans open, I close my eyes and beg the blackness to take me.
It doesn’t.
Biting, licking, kissing, crushing…I feel like a mouse in the clutches of a cat that likes to play with his food before eating it. Why doesn’t he just take what he wants and get it over with? I force all the sensations away and keep my gaze fixed on the pot handle sticking out from the stovetop above me. One of my knees keeps bumping into the hot oven door. Thump. The pot handle dances above us. Thump, thump.
The hand clamped around my throat moves to my hair and the blessed blackness rushes back with my blood. Seizing my chance, I scream—a gurgling sound identical to my mother on her deathbed—and try to wriggle free.
Big mistake. Once, twice, three times he slams my head into the floor.
Disoriented, I watch the steam and smoke billow from the burners. All my hard work, ruined. I’ll have to make James peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when he gets home. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…
A sob escapes at the thought of my brother. When he finds out, he’ll lose it. Maybe I can lie and say I got jumped on my way home from the grocery store. Better to have him running around town looking for a group of guys than taking out his new gun and shooting our father until all of the bullets are gone. I don’t want my brother to go to jail.
Jail—where men rape men and hurting women and children is a crime even the inmates don’t tolerate. James told me what would happen to our father if he went there once when I was twelve. We spent a whole afternoon on his bed, eating mac ‘n cheese and imagining all the horrible things that might happen to our father in jail. I want those things to happen to him. Maybe I should have trusted Detective Lilly.
All the pressure on my body disappears.
“James?” I croak, eyes still closed. Maybe he’s come to save me. Maybe he’s yanked my father away and is beating him senseless. I crack open my eyes and lift my spinning head just enough to see what’s going on.
“Nope.” My father goes for the zipper of his jeans, smirking at my horrified expression. “It’s me and you, now, Sarah, just like we always wanted. Your brother’s not gonna save you this time.”
No!
The word reverberates so loudly in my head, I think I might’ve screamed it. The nearness of his body sends me into a full-blown panic. Crazed, I flail and punch and claw and get nowhere fast.
Mustering the last ounce of strength I have, I desperately grab for the pot handle and yank it down onto us. Scalding water hits my father’s back and arms and rains down onto my hip. The slippery lasagna noodles flop to the ground like dead fish in a steaming puddle.
My father screams. I scream. Instead of collapsing onto the floor like he does, ripping his sopping flannel shirt from his body and cursing at me, I drag myself across the floor toward the nearest puke-green chair. My shirt is tattered and my jeans are twisted and in my way. I right them as best I can and haul myself to my feet.
The room is spinning faster than a merry-go-round. I nearly fall and have to hurl myself toward the refrigerator and the wall where the phone is hanging to keep myself upright. It takes three tries to dial 9-1-1.
“9-1-1,” a gentle voice says. “What’s your emergency?”
>
“Please help me,” I sob into the phone. “328 Skylark Lane, hurry.”
I don’t hear what the woman says next because my father lets out a roar so loud, half the neighborhood probably hears him. A chair crashes into the cabinets. The empty pot clatters across the linoleum and slams into my bare toes. I hear him staggering toward me, hear the table creak under his weight when he grabs onto it for support. “Hang up the fucking phone!”
“—are on the way. Stay on the phone with me, okay? Don’t hang up.”
My father rips the phone out of the wall and throws it at the front door. It shatters into a million plastic pieces that scatter across the linoleum floor. I make it maybe two steps before he grabs my arm and yanks me back around to face him.
“You ruined everything for me!” he bellows in my face. His bloodshot eyes are crazed. His pants are still open. “You and your fucking babies ruined everything!”
Sirens scream in the distance. Maybe he hears them, too, because he hesitates. I could sob with relief and maybe I do because he glares at me, a venomous glare I’ll remember for the rest of my life. In a low voice, he growls, “I’m glad you’re dead.”
He cocks back his unburned arm.
I don’t hear anything else.
Thirty-seven
My father’s furious cursing rolls over me like smoke, thick and choking. Sheetrock ruptures again and again under his fists.
The front door slams open in an explosion of shattering wood and harsh male voices.
My father grunts. Beneath my cheek, the floor vibrates.
Strong hands roll me over and skim my body. When something closes around my neck, I try to get away, but my arms and legs don’t work. I scream, but all that comes out is a whimper.
Sarah, if you can hear me, don’t fight. Your father is in custody and we’re taking you to the hospital. You’re going to be fine.
I wait for relief to come. It doesn’t. I need my brother. I need James.
Don’t try to talk.